Michael L. Printz Award

Michael L. Printz Award
Michael L. Printz Award
Awarded for	the year's "best book written for teens, based entirely on its literary merit"
Country	United States
Presented by	Young Adult Library Services Association, a division of the American Library Association
First awarded	2000
Website	ala.org/yalsa/printz

The Michael L. Printz Award is an American Library Association literary award that annually recognizes the "best book written for teens, based entirely on its literary merit". It is sponsored by Booklist magazine; administered by the ALA's young-adult division, the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA); and named for the Topeka, Kansas, school librarian Mike Printz, a long-time active member of YALSA.^[1] Up to four worthy runners-up may be designated Honor Books and three or four have been named every year.

History

The Printz Award was founded in 2000 for 1999 young adult publications.^[2] The award "was created as a counterpoint to the Newbery" in order to highlight the best and most literary works of excellence written for a young adult audience.^[3]

Jonathon Hunt, a Horn Book reviewer, hopes that the Printz Award can create a "canon as revered as that of the Newbery."^[4]

Michael L. Printz was a librarian at Topeka West High School in Topeka, Kansas, until he retired in 1994.^[5] He was also an active member of YALSA, serving on the Best Books for Young Adults Committee and the Margaret A. Edwards Award Committee.^[6] He dedicated his life to ensuring that his students had access to good literature. To that end he encouraged writers to focus on the young adult audience. He created an author-in-residence program at the high school to promote new talent and encourage his students. His most noteworthy find was Chris Crutcher.^[2] Printz died at the age of 59 in 1996.^[7]

Criteria and procedure

Source: "The Michael L. Printz Award Policies and Procedures"^[8]

The selection committee comprises nine YALSA members appointed by the president-elect for a one-year term. They award one winner and honor up to four additional titles.^[2] The term 'young adult' refers to readers from ages 12 through 18 for purposes of this award.^[9] The Michael L. Printz Award is sponsored by Booklist, a publication of the American Library Association (ALA).^[10]

Non-fiction, fiction, poetry and anthologies are all eligible to receive the Printz Award.
Books must have been published between January 1 and December 31 of the year preceding the announcement of the award.
Titles must be designated 'young adult' by its publisher or published for the age range that YALSA defines as "young adult," i.e., 12 through 18. Adult books are not eligible.
Works of joint authorship or editorship are eligible.
The award may be issued posthumously.
Books previously published in another country are eligible (presuming an American edition has been published during the period of eligibility).

Recipients

The Printz Medal has been awarded for one work annually without exception.^[11] Only A. S. King has received the award twice, one for a single-authored book in 2020 and another as editor and contributor to an anthology in 2024.^[12]

Printz Award winners and runners-up
Year	Author	Book	Result	Ref.
2000	Walter Dean Myers	Monster	Winner	^[13]
	David Almond	Skellig	Honor
	Laurie Halse Anderson	Speak
	Ellen Wittlinger	Hard Love
2001	David Almond	Kit's Wilderness	Winner
	Carolyn Coman	Many Stones	Honor
	Carol Plum-Ucci	The Body of Christopher Creed
	Louise Rennison	Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging
	Terry Trueman	Stuck In Neutral
2002	An Na	A Step From Heaven	Winner
	Peter Dickinson	The Ropemaker	Honor
	Jan Greenberg	Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by Twentieth-Century American Art
	Chris Lynch	Freewill
	Virginia Euwer Wolff	True Believer
2003	Aidan Chambers	Postcards from No Man's Land	Winner
	Nancy Farmer	The House of the Scorpion	Honor
	Garret Freymann-Weyr	My Heartbeat
	Jack Gantos	Hole in My Life
2004	Angela Johnson	The First Part Last	Winner
	Jennifer Donnelly	A Northern Light	Honor
	Helen Frost	Keesha's House
	K. L. Going	Fat Kid Rules the World
	Carolyn Mackler	The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things
2005	Meg Rosoff	How I Live Now	Winner
	Kenneth Oppel	Airborn	Honor
	Allan Stratton	Chanda's Secrets
	Gary D. Schmidt	Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy
2006	John Green	Looking for Alaska	Winner	^[14]
	Margo Lanagan	Black Juice	Honor
	Markus Zusak	I Am the Messenger
	Elizabeth Partridge	John Lennon: All I Want Is the Truth, a Photographic Biography
	Marilyn Nelson	A Wreath for Emmett Till
2007	Gene Luen Yang	American Born Chinese	Winner
	M. T. Anderson	The Pox Party (Octavian Nothing, Vol I)	Honor
	John Green	An Abundance of Katherines
	Sonya Hartnett	Surrender
	Markus Zusak	The Book Thief
2008	Geraldine McCaughrean	The White Darkness	Winner
	Elizabeth Knox	Dreamquake	Honor
	Judith Clarke	One Whole and Perfect Day
	A. M. Jenkins	Repossessed
	Stephanie Hemphill	Your Own Sylvia
2009	Melina Marchetta	Jellicoe Road	Winner
	M. T. Anderson	The Kingdom on the Waves (Octavian Nothing, Vol II)	Honor
	E. Lockhart	The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
	Terry Pratchett	Nation
	Margo Lanagan	Tender Morsels
2010	Libba Bray	Going Bovine	Winner	^[15]
	Deborah Heiligman	Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith	Honor
	Rick Yancey	The Monstrumologist
	Adam Rapp	Punkzilla
	John Barnes	Tales of the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance, 1973
2011	Paolo Bacigalupi	Ship Breaker	Winner
	Lucy Christopher	Stolen	Honor
	A.S. King	Please Ignore Vera Dietz
	Marcus Sedgwick	Revolver
	Janne Teller	Nothing
2012	John Corey Whaley	Where Things Come Back	Winner
	Daniel Handler	Why We Broke Up	Honor
	Christine Hinwood	The Returning
	Craig Silvey	Jasper Jones
	Maggie Stiefvater	The Scorpio Races
2013	Nick Lake	In Darkness	Winner	^[16]
	Benjamin Alire Sáenz	Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe	Honor
	Elizabeth Wein	Code Name Verity
	Terry Pratchett	Dodger
	Beverley Brenna	The White Bicycle
2014	Marcus Sedgwick	Midwinterblood	Winner
	Rainbow Rowell	Eleanor & Park	Honor
	Susann Cokal	Kingdom of Little Wounds
	Sally Gardner	Maggot Moon
	Clare Vanderpool	Navigating Early
2015	Jandy Nelson	I'll Give You the Sun	Winner
	Jessie Ann Foley	The Carnival at Bray	Honor
	Jenny Hubbard	And We Stay
	Andrew Smith	Grasshopper Jungle
	Mariko Tamaki	This One Summer
2016	Laura Ruby	Bone Gap	Winner
	Ashley Hope Pérez	Out of Darkness	Honor
	Marcus Sedgwick	The Ghosts of Heaven	Honor
2017	John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell	March: Book Three	Winner
	Louise O'Neill	Asking for It	Honor
	Julie Berry	The Passion of Dolssa
	Neal Shusterman	Scythe
	Nicola Yoon	The Sun Is Also a Star
2018	Nina LaCour	We Are Okay	Winner	^[17]
	Angie Thomas	The Hate U Give	Honor
	Jason Reynolds	Long Way Down
	Deborah Heiligman	Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers
	Laini Taylor	Strange the Dreamer
2019	Elizabeth Acevedo	The Poet X	Winner	^[18]
	Elana K. Arnold	Damsel	Honor
	Deb Caletti	A Heart in a Body in the World
	Mary McCoy	I, Claudia
2020	A. S. King	Dig	Winner	^[19]^[20]
	Nahoko Uehashi with Cathy Hirano (trans.)	The Beast Player	Honor
	Mariko Tamaki with Rosemary Valero-O’Connell (illus.)	Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me
	Nikki Grimes	Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir
	Geraldine McCaughrean	Where the World Ends
2021	Daniel Nayeri	Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story)	Winner	^[21]^[22]
	Eric Gansworth	Apple (Skin to the Core)	Honor	^[21]
	Gene Luen Yang with Lark Pien (color)	Dragon Hoops
	Candice Iloh	Every Body Looking
	Traci Chee	We Are Not Free
2022	Angeline Boulley	Firekeeper's Daughter	Winner	^[23]
	Angie Thomas	Concrete Rose	Honor	^[23]
	Malinda Lo	Last Night at the Telegraph Club
	Kekla Magoon	Revolution In Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People
	Lisa Fipps	Starfish
2023	Sabaa Tahir	All My Rage	Winner	^[24]^[25]
	Lily Anderson	Scout's Honor	Honor	^[24]
	A. L. Graziadei	Icebreaker
	Sacha Lamb	When the Angels Left the Old Country
	Eliot Schrefer	Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality
2024	A. S. King (ed.), written by King, M. T. Anderson, E.E. Charlton-Trujillo, David Levithan, Cory McCarthy, Anna-Marie McLemore, Greg Neri, Jason Reynolds, Randy Ribay, and Jenny Torres Sanchez	The Collectors: Stories	Winner	^[26]
	Moa Backe Åstot [sv] with Eva Apelqvist (trans.)	Fire From the Sky	Honor	^[26]
	Kenneth M. Cadow	Gather
	Shannon Gibney	The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption
	Candice Iloh	Salt the Water

Multiple awards

As of 2024, only A. S. King has won the Printz twice;^[12] she also received an Honor. Marcus Sedgwick and M. T. Anderson have written one Award winner and two Honor Books. David Almond, John Green, Geraldine McCaughrean, and Gene Luen Yang have written one Award winner and one Honor Book. Seven people have two Honor Books but have never won the Award: Margo Lanagan, Terry Pratchett, Markus Zusak, Deborah Heiligman, Mariko Tamaki, Candice Iloh, and Angie Thomas.

Six writers have won both the Printz Award and the annual Carnegie Medal from the British librarians: David Almond, Aidan Chambers, Geraldine McCaughrean, Meg Rosoff, Elizabeth Acevedo, and Jason Reynolds. Only Chambers and Acevedo have won both for the same book; Chambers won the 1999 Carnegie and 2003 Printz for Postcards from No Man's Land,^[11] ^[27] and Acevedo won the 2019 Carnegie and Printz for The Poet X.^[28]^[18] In its scope, books for children or young adults (published in the UK), the British Carnegie corresponds to the American Newbery and Printz awards.